4) Sveasoft can track the subscribers who redistribute their binaries by attaching some kind of tag to each firmware binary
Doesn't this imply that the source code Sveasoft are distributing is not complete? Doesn't the source code that the GPL requires you to offer have to include pretty much everything needed to build the binary? Not just the C code but the compile scripts also?
It is? I thought Oracle still did that. OK, a quick glance at their web site tells me that they aren't, but it's within the last 5 years that they've stopped, I'm sure of that.
Please re-read my posting. I stated "In the area that I work": did I talk about databases? No. Did I mention Oracle? No. I am talking aout a completely different software field.
With per-cpu licensing, the assumption is that the software can do more for you on a multi-cpu system, hence you pay more for it. There's nothing terribly dodgy about this.
While I agree that there is nothing dodgy about it, one should also factor in processor speed and other issues that affect the amount of useful output that can be extracted from the s/w.
I point this out because it is not a theoretical possiblility, but has been used in the past. In the area that I work, in the early days of commercially available software, vendors tried to charge more when users wanted to move their software to faster machines. That idea did not last long and is now a distant memory.
So, while your idea seems good in theory, expect sufficient push-back from customers to make it non-viable.
Current SCO is the third link in the chain. Whenever something is sold the successor in interest get's "less or equal" what the seller held.
That is a very good point -- combined with the fact that SCO "can't find" the document under which The SCO Group (Caldera at the time) acquired the copyrights from OldSCO (Now Tarentella), one wonders exactly what Caldera did acquire from Tarentalla.
But I think it depends on what you are using your domain for; wildcard spam is minor/rare compared to targetted spam:
Well, I think there are wild differences from one domain to another. One of the domains that my company uses for email has been under a sustained dictionary attack for months now. Others get only targetted spam (real or former email addresses plus postmaster@, sales@, etc).
So a catch all may be OK until some spammer decides to make it the target of a dictionary attack. The problem is: what does one do then? At that point, turning off the catch all will probably mean losing lots of non-spam emails.
But he said Microsoft would drop the clause from all contracts signed from August onward. He said this decision was made following internal discussions over the past year.
Current contracts remain valid for Windows XP and earlier Windows versions.
So the vast majority of Japanes companies will still be shackled by MS's contracts -- contracts with a company that has a track record of violating patents!
Why? What is the benefit? Ultimately, you have to have a certain level of trust. Current paper methods reduce the necessary level of trust -- because independent (and non-independent) observers are watching what happens for me.
Frankly, what happened in Florida was not good, but let's face it, when elections get that close, you may as well toss a coin! When things like weather could affect a result, is the accuracy of the count that important?
What is really important, though, is to prevent any person, organization or company getting into a position whereby they can systematically skew the results of multiple elections.
Until someone comes up with an electronic voting scheme that guarantees that no one can fix an election then we should forget about electronic voting and stick with paper.
Even if you consider the problems in Florida to be more of an issue than I do, they don't require electronic voting to fix them -- let's look for simpler, more foolproof solutions.
Not that I agree with the concept of the V chip -- as a parent, I expect responsible behaviour from my children. I also feel that sheltering them from words, images, etc. that they will have to deal with later in life is probably not a good idea. As has been mentioned, there are other sources of information and blocking access only makes the material seem more desirable.
I have 2 machines with K6-2 processors. Currently, I use "-Os" because I have read that reducing the code size can improve perfomance better than "-O3" on machines with small caches.
Does anyone have any advice about this? Are there any objective comparisons that relate to my configurations?
Switching power supplies can be surprisingly fragile. I've killed a couple working on TVs (that's basically what a flyback circuit is)
I think that the flyback converter in a TV is rather different to a switching power supply in a PC. A TV needs high voltage to power the tube, while a PC needs, what? 12V at most! I don't think PC power supplies use flyback converters.
Now, with high voltage circuits, it is much easier to blow things up!
OTOH, I have seen several capacitors blow in power supplies. Most likeley explanation: faulty capacitor. These were electrolytics, which are notorious.
As it happens, I had 2 motherboards smoke on me today. Given that I used the same power supply, I'm guessing that the power supply has an over-voltage and that's what smoked the MBs.
Zink whiskers may be real, but I don't think they caused the problems I saw today and earlier when those capacitors blew up noisily!
There are many cars on the road that don't have a VIN in the current format. Insurance companies, DMV's etc. all have to track these. For example, my 40+ year old car is titled against the engine number and it is nowhere near 17 digits. Apparently this was quite common at the time the car was originally registered -- at least for that manufacturer.
The local DMV, insurance company does not seem to have a problem with my car's less than 17 digit VIN.
So the systems in place must already be more flexible than is suggested by the article.
Most are manufactured in US; the only foreign countries where they are made are Ireland and Israel
Apart from the obvious example of AMD, who fabs many processors in Germany (and isn't it even former east -Germany?), what about
VIA. Surely their processors are made in Taiwan?
Via's processors may not be leading edge performance, but they are above the limits suggested for control.
What authority can the US government exercise over a foreign company building products abroad? OK, probably some "discussions" the next time the issue of Taiwan buying US arms comes up, but don't forget that Taiwan can also buy many of those weapons from other countries, such as France, UK, Russia, etc.
Oh wait, no! It's just that my Comcast-owned cable modem won't talk to my computer for the n'th time today.
Really! It looks like the equipment they provide now is pure junk. Before it was rock solid, now it goes down many times per day and the only solution is to pull the power connector.
But seriously, why has the spam from Comcast not fallen further? Is Comcast only running a trial on part of its network?
I'm still seeing lots of Comcast IP addresses blocked by using the XBL.spamhaus.net RBL -- how is it that Spamhaus is better at detecting these machines than Comcast?
... on http://www.refestltd.com/. Also, Infoworld, "the Globe and Mail" (?).
Now, given that the website only claims "as mentioned in" those publications, there may not be much they publishers can do. "Mentioned" covers a wide range of possibilites, from "recommended", to "stay away from this at all costs".
Quite frankly, I don't want your kid's fscking money when I retire - that's why I have a retirement account and savings, so I can retire an not be leech on society
While I can sympathise with your thoughts, I think you need to think things through a little more. When you retire, you will be spending money, right? Well, when you spend money you buy goods and services. Those goods and services have to be available at a reasonable price -- that takes and educated workforce, infrastructure, manufactureres, etc.: everything that makes up the economy. Without education, those things won't exist, prices will skyrocket and your money will be worthless.
Your only solution: invest in countries that value education and where a healthy economy can be expected to continue. That may be the US, it may not -- but my point is that if you hope to retire in the US, you had better hope the US economy is in good shape.
Remember that money has no inherant value -- what is happening is that as you work, you are loaning money to the next generation (by creating more infrastructure and building the economy) and just hope that the next generation can repay you.
UnixWare (and OpenServer) licensing represents >$40M of revenue. You think anyone who buys it is just going to kiss that goodbye? Hell no. Anyone with a clue will buy it and then promptly offer a transition program over a course of 2-5 years for existing customers.
You ignore the possibility that Unixware will be shown to infringe on one or more of IBM's patents. Continuing to support the product would constitute willful infringement unless one were to buy a license from IBM. Willful infringement carries penalty (3x) damages.
Essentially, the lawsuit has made the products poisonous to everyone except IBM. Would IBM pick up Unixware after the eventual bankruptsy of TSG? I don't know.
But bootloaders and unloopers exist solely for the purpose of unscrambling satellite signals.
Maybe, but the reason that many people bought programmers with those capabilities was that those programmers were cheaper than programmers without those capabilities.
So now people should be sued for trying to save a buck?
I mean really, its not stealing the signals, its illegally decoding the signal that the problem...
It can get even sillier. Some years ago, I lived in a continental european country. I wanted to watch British TV programs. I acquired a dish, satelite box and a legal card for the decoder (I was paying the monthly charge for the card). Would the satelite company consider me legal: no, because I was receiving the signals outside of Britain (but still in the European Union).
Was I alone in doing this? No: in my local supermarket, I had a choice of about 3 magazines that printed the program listing for the satelite stations.
So what exactly are the legitimate uses of having a card programmer?
The problem in this case, is that people bought programmers that have capabilities beyond what is normally required -- capabilities that are associated with creating the illegal cards ("unlooping")
Why did people buy these programmers: because these programmers were cheaper than the lesser-functioned programmers.
So, really, thousands of people we sued because they tried to save a buck when buying the programmers for legitimate purposes.
Yahoo and MSN offer very good audio and video conf.
MSN video conferencing is a non-starter because of its use of protocols that don't easily pass through NAT routers. SIP is supported in some routers, but H323 is supported by even less.
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Doesn't this imply that the source code Sveasoft are distributing is not complete? Doesn't the source code that the GPL requires you to offer have to include pretty much everything needed to build the binary? Not just the C code but the compile scripts also?
Perhaps this is the real GPL violation!
Please re-read my posting. I stated "In the area that I work": did I talk about databases? No. Did I mention Oracle? No. I am talking aout a completely different software field.
While I agree that there is nothing dodgy about it, one should also factor in processor speed and other issues that affect the amount of useful output that can be extracted from the s/w.
I point this out because it is not a theoretical possiblility, but has been used in the past. In the area that I work, in the early days of commercially available software, vendors tried to charge more when users wanted to move their software to faster machines. That idea did not last long and is now a distant memory.
So, while your idea seems good in theory, expect sufficient push-back from customers to make it non-viable.
That is a very good point -- combined with the fact that SCO "can't find" the document under which The SCO Group (Caldera at the time) acquired the copyrights from OldSCO (Now Tarentella), one wonders exactly what Caldera did acquire from Tarentalla.
Well, I think there are wild differences from one domain to another. One of the domains that my company uses for email has been under a sustained dictionary attack for months now. Others get only targetted spam (real or former email addresses plus postmaster@, sales@, etc).
So a catch all may be OK until some spammer decides to make it the target of a dictionary attack. The problem is: what does one do then? At that point, turning off the catch all will probably mean losing lots of non-spam emails.
Why? What is the benefit? Ultimately, you have to have a certain level of trust. Current paper methods reduce the necessary level of trust -- because independent (and non-independent) observers are watching what happens for me.
Frankly, what happened in Florida was not good, but let's face it, when elections get that close, you may as well toss a coin! When things like weather could affect a result, is the accuracy of the count that important?
What is really important, though, is to prevent any person, organization or company getting into a position whereby they can systematically skew the results of multiple elections.
Until someone comes up with an electronic voting scheme that guarantees that no one can fix an election then we should forget about electronic voting and stick with paper.
Even if you consider the problems in Florida to be more of an issue than I do, they don't require electronic voting to fix them -- let's look for simpler, more foolproof solutions.
Isn't that what the V chip is supposed to do?
Not that I agree with the concept of the V chip -- as a parent, I expect responsible behaviour from my children. I also feel that sheltering them from words, images, etc. that they will have to deal with later in life is probably not a good idea. As has been mentioned, there are other sources of information and blocking access only makes the material seem more desirable.
I have 2 machines with K6-2 processors. Currently, I use "-Os" because I have read that reducing the code size can improve perfomance better than "-O3" on machines with small caches.
Does anyone have any advice about this? Are there any objective comparisons that relate to my configurations?
Oh, wait! 5.x to 2.x, skipping -2 major releases.
(Yes, I know Sun has two numbering systems for the same S/W)
Or configure your Squid cache to block the referrer header.
I think that the flyback converter in a TV is rather different to a switching power supply in a PC. A TV needs high voltage to power the tube, while a PC needs, what? 12V at most! I don't think PC power supplies use flyback converters.
Now, with high voltage circuits, it is much easier to blow things up!
OTOH, I have seen several capacitors blow in power supplies. Most likeley explanation: faulty capacitor. These were electrolytics, which are notorious.
As it happens, I had 2 motherboards smoke on me today. Given that I used the same power supply, I'm guessing that the power supply has an over-voltage and that's what smoked the MBs.
Zink whiskers may be real, but I don't think they caused the problems I saw today and earlier when those capacitors blew up noisily!
The local DMV, insurance company does not seem to have a problem with my car's less than 17 digit VIN.
So the systems in place must already be more flexible than is suggested by the article.
Apart from the obvious example of AMD, who fabs many processors in Germany (and isn't it even former east -Germany?), what about VIA. Surely their processors are made in Taiwan?
Via's processors may not be leading edge performance, but they are above the limits suggested for control.
What authority can the US government exercise over a foreign company building products abroad? OK, probably some "discussions" the next time the issue of Taiwan buying US arms comes up, but don't forget that Taiwan can also buy many of those weapons from other countries, such as France, UK, Russia, etc.
I may be mistaken, but I thought such agreements were illegal in California -- assuming (since Google is based in CA) that that is where he is.
Really! It looks like the equipment they provide now is pure junk. Before it was rock solid, now it goes down many times per day and the only solution is to pull the power connector.
But seriously, why has the spam from Comcast not fallen further? Is Comcast only running a trial on part of its network?
I'm still seeing lots of Comcast IP addresses blocked by using the XBL.spamhaus.net RBL -- how is it that Spamhaus is better at detecting these machines than Comcast?
... on http://www.refestltd.com/. Also, Infoworld, "the Globe and Mail" (?).
Now, given that the website only claims "as mentioned in" those publications, there may not be much they publishers can do. "Mentioned" covers a wide range of possibilites, from "recommended", to "stay away from this at all costs".
Anyone care to tip off PCWORLD, etc?
What's more, unlike other Linux-based solutions, I don't think there have ever been any serious questions raised over its security.
Free/OpenSWAN also interoperates with a wide variety of commercial (soft and hard) VPNs. Authentication can be by RSA secrets or X509 certificates.
Your only solution: invest in countries that value education and where a healthy economy can be expected to continue. That may be the US, it may not -- but my point is that if you hope to retire in the US, you had better hope the US economy is in good shape.
Remember that money has no inherant value -- what is happening is that as you work, you are loaning money to the next generation (by creating more infrastructure and building the economy) and just hope that the next generation can repay you.
... you might want to look at this post by the same author.
You ignore the possibility that Unixware will be shown to infringe on one or more of IBM's patents. Continuing to support the product would constitute willful infringement unless one were to buy a license from IBM. Willful infringement carries penalty (3x) damages.
Essentially, the lawsuit has made the products poisonous to everyone except IBM. Would IBM pick up Unixware after the eventual bankruptsy of TSG? I don't know.
Maybe, but the reason that many people bought programmers with those capabilities was that those programmers were cheaper than programmers without those capabilities.
So now people should be sued for trying to save a buck?
It can get even sillier. Some years ago, I lived in a continental european country. I wanted to watch British TV programs. I acquired a dish, satelite box and a legal card for the decoder (I was paying the monthly charge for the card). Would the satelite company consider me legal: no, because I was receiving the signals outside of Britain (but still in the European Union).
Was I alone in doing this? No: in my local supermarket, I had a choice of about 3 magazines that printed the program listing for the satelite stations.
The problem in this case, is that people bought programmers that have capabilities beyond what is normally required -- capabilities that are associated with creating the illegal cards ("unlooping")
Why did people buy these programmers: because these programmers were cheaper than the lesser-functioned programmers.
So, really, thousands of people we sued because they tried to save a buck when buying the programmers for legitimate purposes.
MSN video conferencing is a non-starter because of its use of protocols that don't easily pass through NAT routers. SIP is supported in some routers, but H323 is supported by even less.